The agile transformation will not be televised ... because it doesn't exist in foresight

You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on skag. And skip out for beer during commercials, because - the revolution will not be televised.

From "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron

Agile transformations don't exist (in foresight)

I mean it. And it is true. At least partially. Let me borrow 3.5 minutes of your time to explain myself.

Many organizations right now (as you are reading these lines) are spending a huge amount of time preparing slide-decks and roadmaps to lay down their plans for the upcoming "agile transformation". That's a Powerpoint-driven transformation. It won't be televised.

In most cases, if you visit those places and ask around: no one really would be able to explain in simple language what exactly it is to be transformed, how, and what's important - at what costs. It takes no balls to send PPT decks around, but the opposite is true - for real transformational decisions, like, for instance, dismissing the project management office. I've seen so many PPT-driven transformations leading to nothing because of a lack of real management will and courage to make strong decisions. Again - making slides and making changes require different skills.

In some cases (banking, telecoms) these "transformational projects" often are coming down from the parent companies, in a form: "thou oughtest get transformed, within 3 months, and by the way here's the paid consultant with a slide-deck to teach you how".

My personal experience over the last years (being that paid consultant) while trying to help several large financial and automotive institutions: that top-down lack-of-leadership slides-driven approach just doesn't work. It creates a lot of confusion, and actually from my experience - it will 100% guarantee lack of any real transformation, but nice-looking slides.

It is such a commonly observed theme that we, consultants, even came up with a name to it: "an agile theater" or more broadly "a change theater".

An "agile transformation" AKA a "change theater" done as a project (with goals, budgets, deadlines) misses the whole point of creating the culture of continuous improvements. The project will get finished, the budget will get spent, the managers will get their dreamt promotion (or fired and re-hired). But hey, nothing changes really. SAMO.

Deep and Narrow over Broad and Shallow

That's it. Instead of going big [doing a "transformational project"] and ruin the whole idea of people taking proactive steps to improve their working life [that's the heart of agile movement] - stop, breathe, think and take it slow.

Here is one million dollars worth of consulting advice for you, for free:

1. Figure out what already works in your organization by finding the "pockets of agility" and the signs of true change leadership happening. That's your goldmine. Any large functioning complex system started with a small functioning system. Find the small good seeds of agility before planting a large garden.
2. Agree on a single but broadly defined product that is important and enables your business in some aspect. This can be a product serving a revenue stream or a business-line. Or it can be a particular service offered to a given customer segment. You name it - find it and agree to work all together to improve it.
3. Then build a real 100% product organization around that product (the "deep and narrow" principle I admire) by starting with good-old plain vanilla Scrum. But instead of scrumming with several teams in parallel - treat all the engineers involved plus their stakeholders as a single product team doing Scrum. Focus on quality and customer value. Engage a coach/consultant with deep know-how on product development work. Invest in the culture of doing it right from the beginning. That's transformational.
4. Keep improving. And God forbid calling it an "agile transformation".

Liked this line of thought? Check out the Large-Scale Scrum adoption principles.

Yet, the agile transformation exists .. but only in retrospect

... And while doing that - the listed 4 steps above - you are actually doing a real deep change and on multiple levels at the same time. And that's the best there is.

Looking back, of course, your followers would say: "Hey, that was an agile transformation!"

But you'd just shrug your shoulders, make a funk move and sing:

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